Episode 2021: Norman Ohler on Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age

In TRIPPED, his intriguing new history of drugs and postwar America, the German writer Norman Ohler makes LSD both a symbol and a metaphor for the history of the Cold War. Linking Nazi Germany, the CIA with what he calls “the dawn” of the psychedelic age, Ohler presents LSD — the revolutionary psychedelic drug invented by the Swiss pharma giant Sandoz which the Nazi tested as a “truth serum” in Dachau — as a weapon used by the American military-industrial complex to fight the Soviets. As with most anti Soviet CIA plots, of course, it was a bit of a farce - although Ohler’s thesis certainly offers an alternative way of interpreting trippy Cold War movies like Doctor Strangelove and The Manchurian Candidate. And Ohler reminds us of the psychedelic age’s most lasting legacy - its influence on West Coast countercultural figures like Ken Kesey, Stewart Brand and Steve Jobs and their invention of the personal computer and internet. Norman Ohler is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blitzed, the non-fiction book The Bohemians about resistance against Hitler in Berlin, as well as the novels Die Quotenmaschine (the world’s first hypertext novel), Mitte, Stadt des Goldes (translated into English as Ponte City), as well as the historical crime novel Die Gleichung des Lebens. He was cowriter of the script for Wim Wenders’s film Palermo Shooting. He lives in Berlin. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe